What Android Wear Means for Your Mobile Apps

In a Google video about Android Wear, the company outlined some of the benefits of APIs and the upcoming software development kit (SDK) that should be available in July. This is great news for consumer and enterprise developers looking to create apps for wearables, such as smart watches and eye glasses, without extensive recoding.

The ever-increasing issue with mobile technology is how to integrate the digital world into the physical world in an unobtrusive way. Jordan described this as useful information at a glance that allows us to be more present in the real world while being more connected in the virtual world. One method of accomplishing this is rich notification on wearable devices such as smart watches. New types of rich notifications, such as stacks, allow you to bundle multiple notifications together and respond with open-ended or established text messages.

This shift is based on simplicity and designed around micro-interactions. To accomplish this, a company’s apps team must match both the navigation method and displayed data to the device. For example, it makes sense for the app to use a voice interface to navigate content on a wearable device, but to use touch navigation on a tablet. It also makes sense to display just the most relevant and actionable information on a one-inch screen while more information can be displayed on larger screens.